


Better Late Than Never

by VioletOrchid18



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Pining, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-Slash, but also they both love each other ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-13 21:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19259158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletOrchid18/pseuds/VioletOrchid18
Summary: “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”Bucky feels his lips twitch involuntarily. His body seems to remember the phrase more than his own memory.“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”The machine begins to hum behind Steve. He turns and steps onto the platform, spine straight in that determined way that Steve adopts when he has a job to do. Banner starts flicking switches, and the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up.In the split second before Steve disappears, blue eyes meet gray.And then he’s gone.





	Better Late Than Never

**Author's Note:**

> I started this immediately after seeing Endgame in April and finally got around to finishing it. Despite being an avid Stucky reader on AO3 for a while this is my first contribution! It's short but honestly I've started a lot of fics over the past year and this is the only one I've finished so I'm proud of that at least. 
> 
> Obviously, spoilers for Endgame, but nothing too extreme. This is unbeta'ed so all mistakes are my own.

“Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.”

Bucky feels his lips twitch involuntarily. His body seems to remember the phrase more than his own memory.

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.”

The machine begins to hum behind Steve. He turns and steps onto the platform, spine straight in that determined way that Steve adopts when he has a job to do. Banner starts flicking switches, and the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up.

In the split second before Steve disappears, blue eyes meet gray.

And then he’s gone.

There’s a rushing in Bucky’s ears. Stupid, self-sacrificing Steven Grant Rogers. Even as Bucky feels his heart drop down through his stomach, he can’t help but feel a small grain of happiness that Steve will at least get to live out the life he’d always dreamed of.

Banner starts to count but his voice is muffled in Bucky’s ears. His vision blurs and he loses focus on the machine in front of him.

_5…_

It’s not like Bucky doesn’t understand. He does. He really does. Steve sacrificed everything for his country and later, the world. He deserves to be happy. He deserves a break from this insane, intergalactic, and apparently multi-dimensional world. Now he gets to have his happy ending with the only person who Bucky believed could be worthy of someone as incredible as Steve Rogers.

_4…_

But a tiny, shameful part of Bucky hopes that Steve will choose to return. To return to the family he’d built here in this future. To the world who may not need him as Captain America any longer, but who would always need him just as Steve Rogers. The punk who never knew when to run from a fight.

_3…_

To Bucky. Who needed Steve more than the dumb blond had ever known, even before he was chock full of super serum. Who only managed to escape the absolute hell of an existence he’d had for the better part of a decade because of that shock of blonde hair and stupid baby blue eyes.

_2…_

Who loved him. Who was in love with him. Probably since he saw that dumbass, scrawny 6-year old try to save a stray dog from a couple of neighborhood bullies who were all twice his size.

_1…_

The air fizzles and shimmers in the empty space that Steve left on the machine’s platform, but no one materializes. Bucky’s fists, which had been clenched in the pockets of his jacked, slowly relax joint by joint. It’s done then. Steve isn’t coming back.

Sam is yelling at Banner who is also yelling while flicking switches and twisting knobs in what is clearly a futile effort to pull Steve back from wherever he is. There’s no way to pull a man back from somewhere he believes he belongs, especially if that man is Steve Rogers.

Bucky drops his head, letting his long hair hide his face, and starts to walk back to Stark’s house, leaving whatever was left of his heart on that empty platform. His feet feel like lead, but he forces himself to keep putting one in front of the other. He doesn't want to stay for Sam and Banner’s inevitable realization of what happened. He wants to say goodbye to the King and Shuri before they return to Wakanda. Maybe they’ll let him keep his small plot of land and he could visit occasionally. He’d have to find someone to take care of the goats full-time, though. His time in the field issn’t over; he can feel it in his old, centenarian bones.

Maybe it was better that Steve didn’t come back. After all, it wasn’t fair to ask one more thing of Steve. He’d brought Bucky back from the darkest pits of hell. That should be enough for him. Steve had done enough. Bucky’s still a broken toy; he’ll never completely be the man he was before the war and HYDRA. He’d probably just end up disappointing Steve anyways.

“Bucky!”

Bucky blinks. He thought that between Shuri and his German knockoff healing factor the brain damage inflicted by HYDRA would have been gone by now. Clearly she missed something in her last brain scan because there was no way in hell—

“Bucky! Will you wait for a second!”

His jaw clenches. He had been so sure. But maybe—

A hand drops onto Bucky’s metal shoulder, large and confident and with enough force that it would have sent a weaker man stumbling. Bucky doesn’t dare look.

It’s Sam. It’s Sam coming to tell him that Steve didn’t come back, something that Bucky had known was going to happen since Steve volunteered to be the one to return the Infinity Stones.

“Buck.”

Bucky’s shoulder yields to the pressure of the hand holding him back and he turns on his heel to find Steven Grant Rogers, in the flesh and goddamn ugly robot suit Stark designed.

His jaw is hanging open in shock. Intellectually, he knows he looks stupid, but he can’t get himself to stop gaping like a fish in the wake of his best friend leaving behind the woman he was sure was the love of said best friend’s life.

He’d been so, _so_ sure.

“You’re late,” he croaks when he finally regains control of his voice.

Steve smiles sheepishly. “Ran into some trouble along the way. But I’m here now. Better late than nev—”

Bucky steps forward and cuts Steve off mid-sentence, pulling him into his arms and digging his chin into Steve’s massive, solid shoulder. _He’s here, he’s real, he came back._ Steve stays silent and wraps his arms around Bucky.

“I told you, Buck. I’m with you till the end of the line, remember?” he murmurs into Bucky’s ear.

“What about Peggy?” He’s not sure if he really wants to know the answer, but he can’t stop the words before they leave his mouth.

Steve takes a step back and rests both hands on Bucky’s shoulders. “When I went back, I saw her. And I was tempted. But she’s moved on, Buck. She’s moved on with her life and it wasn’t fair of me to ask her to throw that all away. Now maybe it’s time that I moved on with my own life.”

There’s something in the set of Steve’s jaw that hints to more depth of his statement. Bucky’s seen this look before, when Steve was attempting to solve a particularly frustrating problem, like how to sneak a group of large men across German lines with only a ball of twine, a stolen cigar, and a bowler hat. He’s not sure what to think about the look being directed at himself. He and Steve usually read each other better than they read themselves, at least that was the case before one of them became a glorified popsicle and the other was subjected to 70 years of torture and brain trauma. Bucky feels that tiny, traitorous, part of himself poking its head out of the hole he’d stuffed it down.

“Buck, I-” Steve begins. “I wa-”

“Hey grandpappies! Pepper’s making burgers for dinner and if we don’t hurry Peter and Morgan are gonna eat them all!” calls Sam from the clearing. His voice startles Steve, who had dropped his hands from Bucky’s shoulders as if he’d been caught red-handed in some kind of crime. Bucky can see the tips of Steve’s ears beginning to turn red.

“Yeah, yeah we’re coming! Keep your feathers on!” replied Bucky, thinking longingly of the time when he could kick Sam off a building without feeling bad about it. “What were you saying, Stevie?”

The blond shrugged. “I was ju—I wanted to—you know what? We can talk about it later.” 

Steve looks absolutely flustered and embarrassed beyond words and Bucky is completely in love with this dumbass. He figures he can let Steve off the hook this one time; he already has an idea of what Steve was going to say anyways.

Bucky claps his flesh hand onto Steve’s shoulder and smiles at his best friend. “It’s fine, Steve. We got all the time in the world, pal.” With that he sticks his hands in his jacket pockets and begins to trail after Sam and Bruce.

“Yeah, I guess we do,” says Steve as he falls into step with Bucky.

For the first time in a very long time, Bucky feels hopeful.


End file.
